The Wilson Deception

by David O. Stewart

  “They were trying to kill you.”

  Joshua smiled with the corner of his mouth. “Yes. Some were.”

  Nash shifted in his chair. “Sergeant Cook, this isn’t the moment for philosophy.”

  “Sir, I still think we should have testimony from the French officers. They know my conduct better than the Americans do. Hell, we wore French helmets and carried French guns.”

  “I’m afraid this court wouldn’t care much what some French officers said. I’ve seen it in other trials. The British, either.” Nash made as though to stand. “Listen, I need to go over my argument.”

  Left alone again, Joshua’s mind wandered. He couldn’t stop it. When he was first arrested, two months before, he raged over the stupid charges. It was incredible really, to be accused of desertion after the fighting he had seen. As the legal process ground forward, blithely indifferent to his innocence, his rage could slide into terror that he would be officially labeled a coward, then shut up in prison for years. Since the trial began two days before, he had sunk into passivity. Nothing he did seemed to matter.

  He had started remembering the fighting. Not in any coherent pattern, just patches and moments.

  The feelings. Terror. Chaos. Decisions based on hunches, guesses that saved your life or gave it away. Go forward. Turn back. Take shelter. Help a wounded man. Not that one, he’s dead. That one’ll die soon. Save yourself. That was the voice that never stopped. Save yourself. It made for bad sleep, no sleep. He sometimes dropped off, only to wake up after ten minutes, or an hour, or two hours. Never more than that. He could lie there and smoke and lose track of time. It was the best he could do, but it wasn’t sleep. Once he woke to find himself curled up on the floor of his cell.

  He saw a man do that at the front, curl up, right there in the trench. Some ran. Joshua wanted to, but he couldn’t. The men in his platoon watched him. Some of the guys were brave, some were sorry specimens. But they all watched him. He was supposed to lead them. So he couldn’t run.

  The men liked having guns in their hands. All the colored soldiers did. French or American rifles, they didn’t care what. Most wanted to fight, fight someone. The hard part was the bombardments, huddled in trench muck, water up to your knees, while shells rained down, hoping not to be shredded by shrapnel or vaporized by a shell blast, hoping not to disappear without a trace, leaving no more evidence of your death than of your life. There was no safe place, less dignity. Jefferson was blown up emptying latrine buckets behind the front trench. It was like playing Russian roulette with a revolver that has cartridges in every chamber.

  Joshua spent so much time waiting to die, waiting for the bullet or the shell. Five minutes of bombardment could last forever. The fighting ebbed and flowed, but it never ended. There was always somebody, not far away, trying to kill him. Even dozing, upright, sunk in mud, his brain listened to mortar bombs and rockets and shells, flare guns and rifle fire, gauging the risk, deciding whether to dive on the ground or huddle in a dugout.

  At first, he thought that patrols and attacks would bring relief. It would be movement, finally doing something. But they were worse. It wasn’t just the artillery and mortars and gas, but also machine guns and riflemen. You were out in the open where they could aim right at you. It was even easier to get killed out there.

  The prison camp hadn’t seemed so bad at first. At least his men weren’t watching him any more, looking to him to have the secret, to know how they could survive.

  Joshua realized that Nash was back, shuffling papers next to him. The prosecutor was seated at the parallel table. The guard called out again. The room stood to attention as five white officers walked purposefully to their seats behind the front table. The windows behind them overlooked the chateau’s semicircular front drive. On a signal from the presiding officer, the prosecutor began his final argument.

  He was hanging it all on the two MPs who arrested Joshua. They were a couple of prize crackers, not interested in a word Joshua said. He found it hard to listen to the prosecutor. So much he said was wrong. The man’s heart didn’t seem to be in it. The war, after all, was over. Even if Joshua had been hiding out from the front line, even if he was the worst coward in history, what could it matter now?

  “Gentlemen of the court.” Nash’s voice snapped Joshua out of his reverie. “Sergeant Cook served as a brave soldier for five months of hard fighting. He was wounded twice, and both times returned to the front.” Nash’s voice was low, nearly conversational. He didn’t gesture a lot. Yet he conveyed, in a controlled way, that he believed in his case, in Joshua.

  Joshua appreciated that.

  “Sergeant Cook’s company had been advancing for six days, through miserable weather. They took two villages from the Germans and a hill that was a powerful stronghold. They were too successful, advanced too far, got out beyond their supplies. They hadn’t received provisions for all six days. If it hadn’t been for food they took from the Germans, they would have starved. If they hadn’t found a well at a farmhouse, thirst alone would have stopped them. But still they advanced, never really sleeping, never really resting, driving the Germans before them.”

  Nash paused. “And then his commanding officer, Lieutenant Markham, made a decision. They couldn’t last without provisions. Someone needed to go get them. So he chose his best non-commissioned officer, Sergeant Cook, a man he had placed in the front of several attacks. He told the sergeant to take two soldiers and go to the rear. Markham told Sergeant Cook to find food and water, and bring it back. When the sergeant reached the rear, he could see the problem. All was confusion. Thousands of men, separated from their units, wandered here and there. The roads were clogged. Supplies went to the wrong place, and were just plain lost. There was no order.”

  Joshua could see one of the officers nod in agreement. It had been pandemonium. Trucks stalled on one-lane roads while horse-drawn teams tipped over, spilling their loads. Other trucks pulled around, then sank in mud up to their hubcaps. MPs screamed. Horns blared. Voices shouted. And always the artillery boomed. It was amateur night at the vaudeville show. It had been better when the Ninety-third fought with the French. At least the French knew how to feed their own soldiers during a battle.

  “My colleague,” Nash waved a hand at the prosecutor, “complains that Lieutenant Markham didn’t write out his order to Sergeant Cook. He complains that the two men with the sergeant didn’t hear the lieutenant give the order. He complains that the lieutenant cannot confirm the order in this trial because he lost his life shortly after ordering Sergeant Cook to retrieve provisions.”

  Lost his life, Joshua thought. Careless.

  “We wish that the lieutenant, a valiant officer, was able to testify in this court. Nevertheless, gentlemen, this was the middle of the decisive battle of the war. Orders are shouted over blasts of artillery and machine gun fire. Grenades explode. Written orders are a luxury that frontline soldiers like Sergeant Cook don’t often enjoy.

  “My colleague, though, has no explanation for a key part of the testimony given by those military policemen who are the key to his case. When Sergeant Cook was arrested, he and his men each carried two haversacks jammed with food, enough for an entire platoon. If they were running away, if they had decided to flee danger and abandon their comrades, why would they carry heavy loads? Why wouldn’t they travel as light as they possibly could and get away as fast as possible? And why would all three of them stay together? Had they split up, each might have fallen in with some stevedore unit or a trench-digging unit. Several colored units were working behind the lines in that sector. After all his time at the front, Sergeant Cook certainly knew how to avoid battle if he wanted to. But that’s not what he was doing. He was gathering supplies, desperately needed supplies, for his comrades.

  “The prosecution of this fine soldier doesn’t hold together. It’s contrary to his record and it’s not supported by the evidence or the experience of war. I urge the court to return a verdict of not guilty and send Sergeant Cook back t
o the duties he performs so well.”

  The guards took Joshua outside while the judges conferred. He was grateful for the chance to smoke. War had taught him the virtues of tobacco. It can be smoked most anywhere. It never loses its power to distract from the unpleasantness of the moment. During a shelling, burrowed into a dugout, he could focus his entire mind on the rising smoke from a cigarette tip, its lazy, curving ascent a graceful helix just inches from his face.

  He indulged in a trace of a smile. In fat times and thin, cigarettes deliver the same subtle message: the world is unchanged, whatever you experienced before is the same. He remembered what Nash had said. Not the moment for philosophy. What was the moment for?

  It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes when word came to return to the courtroom. Nash had said a quick verdict would be a good one. Joshua pinched off his cigarette. He pocketed the stub.

  After the court delivered its verdict of acquittal, after he stood at attention and saluted the judges, Nash sat him down again. Neither man was smiling.

  “You remember what I told you,” the lawyer said.

  “General Parkman.”

  “Right. He reviews the verdict, and he’s the worst son of a bitch in the army. He can sustain it or vacate it and order a retrial.”

  “You think he’ll vacate it?”

  “I do, sergeant. He’s death on deserters and just itching to make another example. And he’s no friend to the Negro soldier.”

  “Then I get retried again?”

  “Yup. But without me. They’re shipping me out next week.” Nash started to stuff his papers into a valise. “Even if the Germans don’t sign a peace treaty, the army figures it doesn’t need a lot of lawyers over here any more.” He sat back and passed a hand over his short brown hair. He looked like his stomach hurt. “Listen, after eighteen months I still haven’t got the army figured out. But I’m going to tell you that something bothers me. I don’t know anything specific. It’s little things. The way people in my office act, the way they talk to me about your case. I don’t think we were supposed to win today.” He looked up directly at Joshua. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. I wish you luck.”

  Tuesday, December 24, 1918

  Joshua was glad to have any visitor on Christmas Eve, even a stranger like Sergeant Virgil Carr. Though Carr was also from the Ninety-third Division, Joshua didn’t know the name.

  Last Christmas had been miserable enough. They had been on board a converted freight ship so decrepit that it had to return to port twice for repairs. Out on the Atlantic, he had expected any minute to head to the bottom of the ocean, courtesy of a German U-boat or maybe the simple disintegration of the ship. This Christmas promised to be worse.

  He shivered once as he waited in the tent used for visits. His greatcoat was heavy, but there wasn’t much heat in the camp, certainly not in the tent he shared with seven other prisoners. A guard stood on either side of the tent’s entrance, facing him.

  A dark-skinned man came through the tent flap. Grinning, he tossed over a pack of Camels. Joshua caught it. As a Christmas gift, it wasn’t the worst he’d ever received.

  “Now I know you want those,” said Carr, “but I got more than that.” He pointed to a chair on the other side of the tent and one of the guards shrugged. Carr dragged it over next to Joshua, lit his cigarette, then one for himself. “Colonel Hayward sent me.”

  “Have you and I met?”

  “I’d be surprised. I’ve been playing in Captain Europe’s band, setting these Frenchies on fire. They can’t get enough of us. I’m on cornet.”

  “I heard you guys. Back in Spartanburg.”

  “Spartanburg.” Carr shook his head. “I guess those people back there weren’t all bad.”

  “Yes, they were.”

  Carr burst out laughing, the kind of snuffling, eyes-crinkled-up laugh it was hard not to join. He smiled at the tent roof after taking a long drag on his smoke. “Yeah, they were.”

  “Playing in the band. That’s good duty.”

  “Damn right it is.” They smoked for a minute, then Carr put his cigarette out on his boot sole. “So, Colonel Hayward sent me here with your medal. D’you hear about the medals?”

  “Come on. I’m a deserter.”

  “That’s bushwa. Everyone says so. I’m not talking about any American medals. These are from the Frenchies. The Croix de Guerre!” He savored the French words, gargling the r’s. He grinned again. He reached into his pocket. “They passed them out to the whole damned division, the entire Ninety-third! Nothing the US Army could do but grumble in its beer.”

  Joshua took the medal, still in a box, lying on a black felt bed. It was a bronze Maltese cross intersected by two swords, suspended from a green ribbon with vertical red stripes. The dates 1914 and 1918 had been inscribed at the center. He stared at it in his hand. It looked small. Suddenly he couldn’t speak. He wasn’t ready for the emotions. Finally he said, “Thanks.”

  “Thank Colonel Hayward. You know, he’s all right.” Carr began to stand up. “Hey, I’ll tell you a rich one. They just started training us for combat. Sent us to the front last spring without even target practice. Now the war’s over, so they decide it’s a good time to train us. Rich, ain’t it?” He pulled his cap on. “Also, to make up for the medals, they cancelled our holiday rations. Just the Negro troops. Merry damned Christmas.”

  Joshua tore his eyes from the medal and looked up at Carr. “I won’t say I wasn’t tempted that day.” He shook his head. “I won’t say I wasn’t tempted once I got dry socks and ate some warm food, let someone else die instead of me. But we weren’t running. We knew the boys were thirsty, near crazy with hunger. We got the food and water. It was for them. I didn’t linger. I didn’t.”

  “’Course you didn’t. You got the medal that says so.”

  Chapter 4

  Saturday, January 18, 1919

  The difference was the tapestries on the walls. To Dulles’ eye, the tapestries, their colors still vibrant after centuries on display, gave the Quai d’Orsay its distinction. Europe had plenty of barny old palaces stuffed with friezes, ceiling frescoes, and echoing marble corridors. Most of those drafty warehouses of history and pride bristled with lush scarlet curtains and chandeliers that blazed against the darkness. Interchangeable, really.

  But the home of the French Foreign Ministry, overlooking the stately River Seine, had the tapestries, old and priceless, proudly blazoning France’s ancient wealth and greatness. Far more important, their playful scenes conveyed a rollicking sense that life was to be enjoyed. What’s the point of being king, they whispered to Dulles, if you don’t have some fun in the evenings? Henry IV, from the look of the tapestries, lived that way three hundred years before.

  Dulles loitered near the guttering tea-urn, waiting for President Wilson to arrive. He and the old boy were getting along better than he had expected, certainly better than Uncle Bert predicted. Dulles found the president mostly levelheaded, which wasn’t easy when a man was drenched with adoration in France, then in Italy, then in England. Wilson could be a bit vain and peevish, but no more than any other Savior of Mankind. Probably less.

  “Eight-to-five we don’t do any actual work today, either.” The benign face of Mark Sykes was before him, his bushy mustache hovering over a cup of tea nearly white with milk.

  Dulles gave a theatrical sigh for the Englishman. “The president’s only been here a month, you know. These things take time.”

  “Yes, well, we don’t have all that much bloody time. We hang about here, having neither war nor peace, not knowing whether to send the troops home or not, not even quite convinced we really won the war. The world is bloody falling apart while we listen politely to tales of woe from every slapped-up tribe of unhappy people in the known world.”

  “Speaking of tales of woe, Mark, I still would like to have a word on Mesopotamia.”

  “Ah, yes, oil. Eh?”

  “America cares a great deal about the self-determination of peoples, and the peoples in t
hat region are as entitled to self-determination as everyone else.”

  “Yes, quite. Also, we all think there’s a honking great pile of oil there.”

  “As it happens.”

  Sykes finished his cup of tea and set it down on a side table. “Allen, dear chap, I fear my masters find it awkward to imagine discussing Mesopotamia with America, which didn’t even trouble itself to declare war against the Turk. How could you expect to be part of the self-determination of the peoples of the Turkish Empire?”

  Dulles was ready. “Having also won its own independence from a particularly violent and repressive monarchy, America deeply shares the experiences of those oppressed peoples. Indeed, our history gives us a special responsibility to assist all oppressed peoples in achieving self-determination.”

  Sykes laughed delightedly. “Oh, you are the most dangerous tribe of all. All that greed wrapped up in virtue. It’s really a lethal combination.”

  The buzz at the doorway alerted them that the Big Four—Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George of Britain, and Orlando of Italy—were arriving, their entrances carefully timed so none would have to wait for any of the others. With mutual nods, Sykes and Dulles separated to serve their respective masters.

  A senior British delegate handed his top hat to an aide. “Such a fuss, these top hats,” he said to Premier Clemenceau of France standing next to him, “but I was told I had to wear it today.”

  “Yes,” Clemenceau replied with no evident expression. “That’s what they told me, too.” With a flourish, the Frenchman removed his bowler hat. As the two men moved toward the presiding table at the end of the room, Clemenceau asked, “What of the Czech prime minister? Will he live?”

  The Englishman smiled. “Most extraordinary. The bullet hit his wallet in his jacket pocket, so his injury was really quite slight.”